When Thomas, Minho, and Newt, the 3 main leaders of the Gladers, open the secret door, they are nearly blinded and burned by the sun. They have been in the dark for so long that their eyes require adjusting, but also the sun has grown much much hotter over the years. They have to unpack everything and pull sheets out to use to cover their heads. They walk out into the desert with the hot sun, and soon walk for the whole day. They go to sleep with the sheets over their heads, but soon a storm starts to brew. There is no rain, only tornadoes and lightning. Everybody is afraid, but soon the wind dies down, and they run towards a building. They see a girl with long flowing black hair come out of the building, and Thomas tells the rest of the Gladers to wait there and that he will go talk to the girl, in secret hopes that it is Teresa. It does end up being Teresa, and she was only pretending to not remember him, she cries and hugs him, and tells him to run. He listens, and feels horrible for it, but he convinces the Gladers to run away from her before she can hurt them. She is being controlled by WICKED, as well. The Gladers run from her and eventually come across a boy named Jorge. He says he is “in charge of these parts”. Thomas asks to speak to him alone, and Jorge agrees and leads him to a dark room where they talk. Thomas convinces him to lead the Gladers to the “Safe Haven” that WICKED told them about. Jorge agrees, but says he only wants to bring one other person with him, Brenda. Jorge says that Brenda is the most competent and the best of the fighters in the group of Cranks that he leads. Jorge also says that they need to eat before doing anything, and sends the rest of the Cranks away to where nobody will hear what is going on, and be angry that Jorge is leaving without them. Jorge and Brenda then lead the Gladers to where they store food, and feed the hungry Gladers. While Brenda, Jorge, Thomas, and the rest of the Gladers eat, Brenda flirts with Thomas and lets him know that she likes him, also previously having kissed him on the cheek. Thomas does not know how he feels about this, for he wants to stay loyal to Teresa, but also thinks that Brenda is very pretty and has a nice personality. He finds himself liking her hugging him and sticking around, and feels guilty for it. Suddenly, as they are eating, the tunnel they are in starts collapsing; the rest of the Cranks found out what was going on and made the tunnel collapse on them in an attempt to kill them. But Brenda and Thomas escape, and start wandering through the tunnels, meeting some far gone cranks on the way. The Cranks try to kill them, but they hide in a small cavern for a while. When Brenda thinks the Cranks are gone, she turns on the flashlight, but the leader Crank is silently waiting for them, and grabs Thomas by the shirt, repeatedly smashing his face against the rock sides of the cavern in attempts to get him out of the cavern. Brenda grabs her knife and stabs the Crank in the hand, tackles him, and makes Thomas kill him. He does, but he is in shock afterward, because he had never killed someone before then. Thomas tells Brenda that he will not kill anyone else, and he just wants to see the sun again. Brenda then leads him out of the tunnels, and eventually they make it to a city filled with partying Cranks. Thomas and Brenda hide in a truck, sleeping for the night. When Thomas wakes up, it is morning, and he sees something glimmering outside the truck. He gets out to go investigate, and it is a plaque just like the ones in the maze. But instead of WICKED, it reads: Thomas, you’re the real leader. He is confused, and Brenda speaks up behind him saying that those are all over the place and she meant to tell him. She doesn’t know what they mean. After they finish speaking, two men and a woman come up to the alley, one of the men has a gun. They threaten Thomas and Brenda into going to their party, and make them drink something that burns their throats on the way down. Next thing they know, they wake up in a dark room with bright lighting on their faces. Thomas wakes up first, and is questioned by the two men and woman, but soon they hear banging and thumping up the stairs, and the men and woman leave to go see what the noise is. Brenda wakes up then, and Thomas and she wait, terrified. Minho and Newt end up coming down, and untying them. They leave the building but just as they get out, the man with the gun runs out and shoots Thomas in the shoulder. He passes out and wakes up several times until finally he wakes up in a room with WICKED employees healing him and making sure he’s okay. He hears them say to each other that the gun was not supposed to be part of the Variables in the test, so they had to make sure he didn’t get infected from that. He then passes out again and wakes up to rarely any pain in his shoulder, back on the ground where he was before. Everyone is surprised and confused, and Thomas does not know how to explain what happened...